


Protective Colouration

by straight_up_gay



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (kinda?), ... but also some very Good And Important Friendships :3, Baby Gay Feelings, Character Study, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Personal Growth, Pining, The Very Specific Experience Of Being 14 And Trying To Convince Yourself You're Straight, Toxic Friendships, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straight_up_gay/pseuds/straight_up_gay
Summary: Ty Lee can see people's auras. Her friend Mai's aura is a motionless grey fog, her sometimes-friend Zuko's aura is a bruised purple-red. And Azula, Azula who she doesn't have words to describe how she feels about, is a shining electric blue.But she's never been able to see her own.(elevator pitch: Ty Lee realizes she's lesbiem and also realizes her own worth)





	1. Pink

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: now with [INCREDIBLE art](https://gayrightszuko.tumblr.com/post/182788579468/bittermoth-wings-click-for-quality-inspired) by @thisismeconfessing, seriously I can't emphasize enough how much I love this!

Ty Lee looks at her reflection in the glaze of the teapot. It's indistinct, a soft, pale smudge on the dark surface.

She wishes she could tell if her makeup was off. She's used to doing her stage makeup, the bright colours designed to make her face stand out even to someone sitting far away from the stage. But the Kyoshi Warriors' style is way heavier than the makeup she normally wears, and she doesn't totally trust herself to do it properly. 

It's an essential part of their disguise. That doesn't mean she has to like it.

"The Earth King and the Council of Five do not trust the Dai Li. They imprisoned your leader, Long Feng. Soon they will turn on all of you and eliminate you." 

She’s tempted to glance back over her shoulder, to see Azula standing bold and tall among the soldiers. But she knows that it’s Azula’s moment, and to draw their attention to her would spoil it. 

So instead, she looks up at Mai.

Mai’s wearing the expression that had made her the despair of the etiquette masters back at the Fire Academy, the flat disinterest that dips just south of polite. Around her, her aura is as foggy and colourless as always, just as disinterested. If she’s annoyed by the makeup, or anything else, then there’s no way of knowing.

Mai is fascinating to watch, mostly because she's got the stillest aura of anyone Ty Lee has ever seen. Sometimes, she wants to scoop it up in a bottle, test it to see if it reacts to anything at all. 

"The Earth King and each of the five generals must be taken out simultaneously. Long Feng has placed you in my command while we overthrow the government."

Ty Lee’s hand stutters on the teapot handle. 

_I'm talking about conquering the whole Earth Kingdom _. It still seems unreal, too big to be true, like the fireworks of flowers they had on New Years’.__

____

____

"If I sense any disloyalty, any hesitation, any weakness at all, I will snuff it out."

She can’t see Azula’s face, but she can guess what she looks like from their years of debate class. Azula had always been the best debater in their year, terrifying and lovely in the same way as the ocean. 

And Ty Lee had always been by her side.

She shakes herself, tries to steady the kettle in her hand.

"That is all.”

Over the almost-silence of the Dai Lee leaving, she can hear Azula’s light footsteps. Ty Lee’s heart jumps at the sound, but she makes herself finish the pouring before she looks up.

"Nice speech, Azula. It was pretty and poetic, but also scary in a good way!”

When she hands the cup to Azula, she smiles, almost reflexively. Azula is really good at being scary, but Ty Lee secretly likes her best just like this, almost relaxed and almost amused. Her aura glitters around her, hard as ever, but less sharp.

"Yeah. I thought you were going to make that one guy pee his pants.”

She's made a study of people's colours over the years. It's always interesting to see what they mean, what they tell her about people.

But in all her years of watching, nobody's had an aura quite like Azula’s.

"There are still a few loose ends. The Avatar, and my brother and uncle."

The colour of the princess' aura had been the first thing to strike Ty Lee when she arrived at the Academy. She'd thought, at first, that blue was a funny colour for a firebender. 

Now she knows better. Azula's blue is cool, electric, polished until it shines like a thousand-facetted gem. Unique, distinct. Beautiful.

"What should we do, Azula?”

There's just something about Azula that makes things ... real. When she says that there are only a few loose ends to tie up, Ty Lee believes her. 

Azula smiles. "I'm going to need you to provide a distraction. It would be so inconvenient for the king to develop doubts about his loyal Warriors at this point in the game.”

Ty Lee nods. “Consider it done!”

Azula has always been the planner, has always been the ones with ideas for their future: Azula on the Firelord's throne, Mai and Ty Lee by her side. A brand new age for the Fire Nation, washed in gold and glory.

And, if they can capture the Avatar, that era looks closer than ever.

Azula turns and leaves the room, and Mai almost follows her. Almost, because she turns back to Ty Lee, with part of a frown on her face.

"Hey," she says quietly, "what was with you when we were fighting that girl earlier?"

"What girl?"

Mai raises an eyebrow, a talent she’d practiced in boring classes until she could do it perfectly. "You know, the Earth Kingdom girl. The Kyoshi Warrior?"

"What do you mean, what was up with me?" There's something churning and uncomfortable in her stomach, but there's no reason for it, so she ignores it. She's good at ignoring pointless things. 

"You're not prettier than we are?' Really?" 

"I was ... well, you and Azula were insulting her, so I thought I should too!" And it was a fair assessment, too. The girl had been pretty, with a wood-brown aura that Ty Lee would have loved to know more about. But she hadn't been prettier than them, and she definitely hadn't been prettier than Azula. “It’s not my fault I’m not as good as you guys!”

Mai looks like she’s about to say something else, but she shrugs and turns away. “Hey, don’t get mad. I was just wondering.”

For once, Ty Lee is happy to be wearing the Kyoshi Warriors’ makeup, because it hides the fact that her face has gone hot with embarrassment.

In Ty Lee’s animal defences class, back at the Academy, they had learned about protective colouration. The guest lecturer that day had brought in a cage filled with bittermoths that day, showed the girls their distinctive wings, meant to make sure that predators couldn’t see them at all. Maybe the Warriors use their makeup in the same way.

 It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, when she thinks about it that way.

***

There's this bad dream she'd had as a child: she’d be in a room with all of her sisters, outside of her body, and she wouldn’t be able to tell which one was her.

She hadn’t bothered telling her parents; they wouldn’t have understood what was so bad about it, even if they’d had time to listen. Instead, she’d spent hours watching her sisters, trying to figure out if she could tell them apart by sight alone, if she could find differences without them talking. They never talked in the dreams.

She hadn’t found any physical differences between them; this had been before they started to pick up scrapes and scars, before Ty Lum cut off all her hair, before Ty Lin had started wearing their grandmother’s bracelet to remember her. Instead, she’d started seeing bursts of colour in the air around them.

At first, she thought she’d been making it up, that she’d been so sleep-deprived that her brain had started making up things where things weren’t there. But the colours got stronger and stronger, even when she’d slept well.

Finally, she could recognize which of her sisters it was, reliably, even seeing them from far away. She’d liked them: Ty Lum’s bright orange, Ty Lao’s dramatic blue, even Ty Woo’s bright, acidic yellow.

Her dreams had gotten quieter, easier to take. But she’d never been able to see her own.

***

In backward glances, without looking like she's looking, Ty Lee studies the Earth King's aura. 

Kuei (as he'd insisted on Mai and Ty Lee calling him) is purple, not strong but vibrant.From long experience, Ty Lee knows that all colours contain their opposites. There are certain patterns - red is intense, green is odd, pink is soft and safe - but other than that, colours can mean anything.

Ty Lin, her favourite sister, had been a dreamy, pale lavender, the colour of violets. Madame Wao, the principal of the Academy, had been an imperious, dark eggplant.

From what she knows of Kuei so far, he's much more like the former than the latter

"What's it like being a Kyoshi Warrior?" he asks, head tilted to one side. "Is it fun? Do you get to sleep in tents?"

Mai looks pleadingly at Ty Lee. She can only sustain a certain level of pretended interest. 

"Yes, Your Majesty. We get to sleep in tents all the time!"

The Earth King looks expectantly at her, and Ty Lee realizes that hasn't been enough to sate his curiosity. She looks over at Mai and nods, to let her know she'll take it away from here.

“I’ve only been with the Warriors for a little while now, and there’s a lot I still don’t know, but it’s been incredible so far!” 

She tries to imagine the life of the girl she’s pretending to be. Ling, that’s the name she had given, a proper Earth Kingdom name for a proper Earth Kingdom girl. Where was she born? Who was she before she was a Warrior? 

“We’ve been all over the kingdom. I … I miss home, sometimes, but that’s just how it is.”

Kuei smiles encouragingly. "And what inspired you to be a Warrior? Your life sounds so exciting, but ... so difficult.”

She trusts Mai's poker face enough to say, "Well, I thought it was my duty to protect my country!”

Ling, it turns out, is sweet and idealistic, an only child. She has a boyfriend back home, in a little Earth Kingdom town that Ty Lee is careful not to name, and she misses him very much but she thinks it’s important to serve her nation. 

To make it feel real, Ty Lee feeds in bits of her experience in the circus; the way the tents smelled damp when you didn't let them air-dry properly, the way your new calluses itched and prickled after a day’s work, the way meat tasted cooked over an open fire.

Kuei is a very attentive listener, much more than she would have expected from the Earth King. He nods along, and only occasionally interrupts her to ask for clarification.

It should be charming, or at least endearing. Instead, she’s embarrassed.

He’s not an idiot; his questions are smart enough. But he’s almost painfully trusting, and he hasn’t learned to … he's at least five years older than she is, and there are no barriers in his face, nothing guarding his enthusiasms from the rest of the world. 

If Kuei had spent even a week in the pressure-cooker of the Academy, he would have known better than that.

“Are you all right?” he asks, and she shakes herself. “I’m sorry, I’ve been having you talk for so long, I’m sure you’re thirsty. I’ll have the servants fetch you some chilled fruit juice.”

He stands up.

“You could give me a little help,” she whispers, to Mai.

“But you’re so good at it,” Mai whispers back, completely straight-faced.

She wants to be annoyed, but she really is good at performing. Good in the same way she's good at chi-blocking: a skill practiced so often it's almost automatic. It's like the first time she told Azula and Mai that her aura was pink, a story she'd woven layers around as the years went on.

Sometimes she even forgets it's not true.

Let Azula take care of the negotiations with Long Feng, manipulating and his men through her expert combination of fear and flattery. This is what she lives for.

"I am a professional, after all," she says, and grins. "Ready for round two?"

***

Ty Lee glares at the earthbender. 

She's not even looking in her direction; she's in an urgent-looking conversation with the handsome water tribe boy. She wouldn't be able to see her even if she was. Still, Ty Lee sticks her tongue out at her back.

She doesn't like Toph. She'd heard something about how the girl is so good at earthbending that she can tell truth from lies just by hearing people's heartbeat vibrating through the ground. That just seems like it shouldn't be allowed.

Also, she'd just earthbent Ty Lee's hands and feet to the floor, but that's secondary.

Sokka turns away from the conversation, and toward the two of them. Ty Lee smiles at him, as flirty as she can while stuck upside-down.

"We're leaving now. And you'd better not try to follow us, or Toph'll make you regret ... making that decision, okay?"

He seems nice, friendly, he's got good hair, he'd probably be a challenging sparring partner. It's too bad he's very much not on their side, and very much unavailable.

Mai rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to chase after you guys for a stupid bear."

In her peripheral vision, Ty Lee sees the Earth King cover Bosco's ears.

Toph leans up to whisper in Sokka's ear. Sokka raises an eyebrow, but nods. He motions for the Earth King to head out with him, and she's left with Toph standing there, arms crossed across her chest. Her clear black aura looks delicate, but so do diamonds.

There's no reason for Ty Lee to be afraid. There's nothing she's hiding from the other girl. Still, she doesn't want to say anything, in case ... in case ...

"You know the thing you're doing with Sokka?" Toph asks, just quietly enough that Mai probably can’t hear it. "Don't bother."

There's not much room for dignified outrage when you're suspended upside-down, but Ty Lee tries it anyways. "What, are you in love with him?"

Toph laughs, quick and barking. "No! Just ... I know what you're trying to do, and trust me, it's not gonna work."

"What do you mean, "what i'm trying to do?" I'm flirting!”

Toph doesn't look annoyed anymore. She looks almost ... sorry. What right does she have to feel sorry for her?

"Oh, never mind. I'm the blind one, right?"

Toph waves her hand in a complicated pattern that Ty Lee doesn't follow, and the rocks around her hands and feet sink back into the ground. Ty Lee wobbles and loses her balance, lost without the rocks for support, and winds herself.

By the time she catches her breath and gets to her feet, the other girl is gone. 

Mai squints at her. "What was that about?"

Ty Lee shrugs, wincing as her shoulders and arms complain. She’s definitely going to have to stretch again after this. “I hate her,” she says, gloomily. 

Man, Azula’s gonna be so mad when she finds out what happened.

***

The sea wind is cold, but Ty Lee doesn’t mind. From her perch up on the cruiser’s second deck, she has a good view of the stern, of the dark, choppy waters following it. 

Back at the Academy, the three of them had snuck out at night sometimes, climbed down from their room to the ground. Even now, there’s something comforting about being up high in the chilly dark, as though Mai or Azula would nudge her to pass the sweets she’d smuggled out.

She frowns. Azula … well, she hadn’t been happy that they had let the Avatar’s friends escape. She hadn’t said as much, but Ty Lee can read it in her silences, in the way her voice goes around them.

But it could be worse. At least she’s not ignoring them. Ty Lee hates that more than anything.

A deck below her, she hears voices. It’s too far away to tell who they are, but it sounds like it could be Mai and Zuko.

She stifles a laugh, not wanting to intrude if it is them. 

They’ve been so cute together, as awkward as turtleducks waddling up onto land for the first time. Mai had been almost _visibly excited_ to see Zuko. And even though Zuko’s aura is different from the last time she’d seen him, a dark bruised redbrownpurple, he seems happy enough.

Well, whatever happy means, for him. 

She stands up, stretching out her cold-stiff muscles, and tries to stop worrying. Azula will be annoyed at them for as long as she decides, and then she’ll drop it, and it will be over, the way it’s always been.

It’s better to think about the future

She doesn't actually know much about what it's like at court. Azula had told her about Capital City: the Doors of Sozhin and the secret steam-powered mechanisms that let them open with only a push, the Dragonbone Catacombs where all the dead Firelords sleep in glory, the broad expanse of Coronation Plaza. But she hadn't told Ty Lee much about what life was like in the Royal Palace.

She'd heard (from someone else, not Azula) that there had been dances at court a long, long time back. And they had been beautiful, she’d heard, firebenders weaving light and colour through the crowd in time with their movements. She can’t really see it happening inside the Palace, but maybe in the Royal Gardens, lanterns up to light the darkness, the smell of blossoms thick in the air. 

She would have liked to have gone to one of them.

Mai could have gone with Zuko, and Ty Lee can’t stop herself from laughing at the idea of them, both beautifully dressed, both complaining about all the other guests. Of course, if Mai went with Zuko, that would leave her and Azula. Neither of them are seeing anyone, so they could go together, as friends. 

Maybe she could finally convince Azula to wear more of her hair down. They’d be the prettiest girls at the whole dance, apart from Mai, so they could definitely find boyfriends among the guests.

But when she tries to picture the faces of the boys they’d talk to, there’s nothing there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally watched avatar and can i get a hell yeah if you also think Ty Lee is a huge "haha i can't be gay i flirt with boys who i don't care about all the time even tho my friend is way prettier and more interesting!!!" style repressed lesbian.
> 
> and i'm SO fucking predictable, the whole "baby lesbian who's constantly performing for others and lying to herself slowly realizing that she can't live for other people's approval" concept drilled directly into my brain and wouldn't leave.
> 
> (Updates Saturdays)


	2. Red

Even in the stuffy old beach house, the air on Ember Island is almost unbelievable fresh. Ty Lee has to stop herself from breathing in gulps, filling her lungs like someone who's been underwater for weeks.

The palace is just as pretty as Azula said it would be, but there’s a red aura that hangs in the air constantly. It’s not exactly bad or anything, but it’s nice to be somewhere where the air is a little clearer.

"I can't believe we're finally here," she says, flinging open the shutters on their window. Mai squints in the sudden light. "It's like being back at the Academy again, all of us together. Well, I mean, Zuko wasn't with us back then, but ..."

Mai makes a face. "That's a good thing? The Academy was awful!" She goes back to sorting through her clothes, laying them out on the bed.

Ty Lee laughs. "Soooooooo," she says, in a singsong voice, sitting on top of one of the piles, "how are things with your booooyfriend?”

Mai throws a skirt at her. "You know. It's not like you don't see us."

It's true, she does, but ... it feels weird talking about Zuko when Azula's around, and she's almost always around.

"It's ..." Mai shrugs. "I dunno."

"Ugh," Ty Lee says, flinging herself down onto the bed, making one of the piles flop over. "You're the worst!"

"You should date someone," Mai says, sounding amused. "Then you can make up all the drama you want."

"Unfortunately," Ty Lee says, posing dramatically with her hand against her face, "the boy I am in love with is unavailable."

Mai sighs. "We are not ..."

"We're star-crossed lovers, from two warring nations!"

"You've talked to him once!" Mai says. "No, twice. But still!"

She can't remember what colour his aura is. She's not very good at remembering boys' auras, they're never really as interesting as girls' auras anyway. 

"Well, maybe I could be persuaded to get over my heartbreak if you could introduce me to some of Zuko's hot friends?"

Mai snorts. "I'm pretty sure we are Zuko's friends. Well, us and his uncle."

Ty Lee's eyes open wide. "Mai! Are you sure we're ..."

She shrugs. "He's in jail. That doesn't mean he doesn't exist. What're they gonna do, throw me in jail for knowing about him?"

Maybe they could. Maybe they would. But Mai clearly isn’t worried. 

"Hey, relax," Mai says, hands on her hips "I'm supposed to be the gloomy one, remember?"

There's something reassuringly solid about Mai's aura, something stable. Away from the palace and the ever-present red aura, it's a lot easier to believe in it.

***

Ty Lee lies back in the ocean, turning herself into a starfish to stay afloat. 

She’d gotten too hot on shore, and the boys had gotten boring. There’s only so many things you can get boys to do for you before the game gets old. Besides, she'd started feeling irritable. There had been too many other girls around, and she couldn't stop herself from sizing up the competition, looking around to see if any of them were prettier than her.

Here? Everything is peaceful. With her ears underwater, it’s almost totally silent, the noise of the beach replaced by the hum of her heartbeat in her ears. All she has to do is kick her legs every once and a while, to make sure her feet don’t go under.

It takes her a while to realize that someone is calling her from the shore.

She stands up on the bottom, feet sinking into the sand. Zuko is standing on the shore, just outside of the tide line, with his arms crossed awkwardly in front of him. Even at this distance, his aura is giving her a headache. 

The sad purple-red had been bad enough, but for the last few weeks, it’s been even worse. Now, it changes all the time, flickering between red and yellow and blue, and even sometimes orange. It looks like it can’t decide what colour to be. 

“What’s up?” she yells across the water in between them. “Mai need help with her hair? Azula need a fourth for another round of Kuai?”

“No.”

She takes a few strokes closer to shore, close enough that she can stand mostly out of the water if she wants to. “Then what’s up?”

“I wanted to ask …” The sun’s behind him, so Ty Lee can’t see his expression very well. And it’s hopeless reading his aura; it changes too much for her to get used to the patterns.

”Azula said you ran away to join the circus.” From the sound of Zuko’s voice, he could go either way on believing it. “She said you left the Academy after she and Mai did.”

She grins. “I did, actually!”

“The circus,” Zuko says, deadpan. 

“Uh huh! It was amazing, we toured all around the Fire Nation, even met up with the Fire Festival a few times. Our ringmaster said I had the best balance of anyone he’d ever seen!”

“I guess she was telling the truth.” Zuko frowns down at the sand, his aura muddier and more fragmented than ever.

It hadn't always been like this. His aura had been yellow when they were young, she's pretty sure. Yellow like a candle flame, like a weak winter sun. It had scattered easily when Azula made fun of him. 

She has a sinking feelings she knows exactly when it changed.

“Did you want a demonstration?” She does a handstand in the shallow water, looking at him from upside-down. Sometimes, it's easier to look at the world that way. 

“No, I just …” 

Now the sun really has to be messing with her eyes, because he looks uncertain, hesitant.

“Why did you do it?” he asks, finally. 

She can’t shrug hanging upside down, but she tries anyways. “Why? I dunno, it sounded like fun?”

Zuko’s upside-down face floats in her vision, as confused as ever. He’s clearly expecting a better answer.

Ty Lee doesn't even have a better answer for herself. After Azula and then Mai had left, there hadn’t been much point in staying. But it was also …

Maybe Mai was right about the Academy. It had been like something pressing down on her chest, like everyone was expecting something she couldn’t give them. All the masters had wanted her to be dignified, noble, as poised and deadly as a Fire Nation noblewoman should be. Maybe she'd just gotten tired of them saying that she'd never be able to take a noble husband if she kept acting so silly. 

She ends her handstand in a roundoff. Zuko flinches away from the splash, clearly unwilling to get wet.

There's still a searching look on his face when she rights herself and wrings out her hair, something that makes her want to squirm away. Zuko always insists on digging up unpleasant things. She doesn’t understand why he can’t just let them lie. 

"Why? You thinking of joining the circus yourself?" she asks, in her cheeriest voice.

"No! I was just …” For a moment, he almost looks disappointed. Then, to her relief, the look shifts to annoyance. “Never mind.”

He turns back towards the umbrellas, kicking up a cloud of sand as he goes. 

Ty Lee dives underwater entirely, closing her eyes against the salt. She wonders how long she can hold her breath before she has to come up for air. 

***

She’s the last one out the door that afternoon, the last one to decide what she’s going to wear to the party. After turning her luggage inside-out, trying on a few of Mai’s shirts, and unbraiding and rebraiding her hair twice, she finally has an outfit she’s happy with.

So she steps out the door of the vacation home, blinking in the low golden light. 

They’re all there waiting for her, Zuko with his hand around Mai’s waist, Azula mid-speech. She’s struck by how normal they look, the way the sunlight smooths out the lines of the faces and makes them look carefree. Except …

Well, except the faint red aura from the palace is there again, hanging in the air between them. Clinging especially to Zuko and Azula.

It’s not a soft red. It doesn’t make compromises. 

In their lessons on animal defences, the teacher had brought in tiny frogs, each no bigger than Ty Lee’s thumbnail. Those, their teacher had handled with thick gloves; their colouration had warned that they were poison. 

She shakes her head. “Ready to go!” she says, with as much cheer as she can gather. 

When Ty Lee had first started to see auras, her sisters had hung on her every word. They’d loved hearing about what their auras looked like, how they were different from each others’, how they changed from day to day. It had been nice, being the special one for once. 

She’d been so proud when she’d learned to figure out her family’s moods from they way their aura had changed. She’d been so proud that she’d run right up to Ty Lin and told her she knew that she had been fighting with their mother.

Ty Lin hadn’t been proud at all.

There are things she hadn’t known before that day. She hadn’t known that Ty Lin could hit so hard, her palm striking flat across Ty Lee’s cheek. She hadn’t known that someone could look angry when they were actually terrified, aura bleached almost to white. She hadn’t known there was a wrong way to be special, a wrong way to stand out.

If she squints, if she focusses just on their faces, she can’t see the other aura at all. 

“Finally,” Azula says. “I was beginning to think we’d be late.”

There are things it isn’t safe to know or notice. Ty Lee knows that, now.

***

It takes her a moment to find Azula in the crowded room. It's strange picking her out as just another teenager, hair half-down and shoulders bare.

Running to her feels strange and familiar, wrong and right. For a moment, she doesn't know what she'll say when she gets there.

“Oh, I'm glad you're here," she says, feeling hot and breathless. "Those boys won't leave me alone. I guess they all just like me too much.” 

And sure, it’s fun to flirt with them, make them want her, but it’s boring once she has their full attention. The idea of actually picking one of them to go out with feels … weird.

Azula sighs. “Come on, Ty Lee. You can't be this ignorant.”

Ty Lee cocks her head to the side. “What are you talking about?"

“Those boys only like you because you make it so easy for them. You're not a challenge. You're a tease. It's not like they actually care who you are.”

Startled tears spring into her eyes, and she doesn't understand why. It’s not as though she’d really cared about any of the boys either.

“Okay, okay, calm down. I didn't mean what I said,” Azula says, and in the right light, she looks almost sorry. “Look, maybe I just said it because I was a little,” she quiets to a whisper, “jealous.”

Jealous? Ty Lee is startled out of her hurt. “You were jealous of me? But you're the most beautiful, smartest, perfect girl in the world.”

“Well, you're right about all those things. But for some reason when I meet boys, they act as if I'm going to do something horrible to them.”

“I’m sure they're just intimidated by you.” Even Ty Lee is, sometimes. “Okay, look, if you want a boy to like you, just look at him and smile a lot and laugh at everything he says, even if it's not funny.”

“Well, that sounds really shallow and stupid.” Azula smiles. “Let's try it.”

Boys are dumb, Ty Lee knows. That's why it's so much nicer to talk with girls. Because boys don't even notice beautiful things when they're put right in front of them.

Well, if Azula wants to kiss one of those dumb boys, she can make it happen.

She pitches her voice deep, in imitation of the boys who had been talking to her. “Hey there, sweet sugarcakes. How you liking this party?”

Azula laughs awkwardly loud, so loud that people around them turn to look at the two of them. Ty Lee almost flinches at their looks, at their eyes on her. It feels like she's been caught sneaking out at night or stealing sweets from the kitchen.

She can't look back at Azula until they go back to their conversations. But even when she does, it's not any relief. Ty Lee had helped her pick out her necklace, and the gold catches the gold in her eyes, distracting, discomfitting.

They’d played a dancing game together when they were younger, a game Ty Lee never really knew the rules to. Every time it looked like Ty Lee was getting close to winning, Azula would change the rules, and she’d have to scramble to catch up.

She feels just as off-balance now.

***

The moon is floating out over the water, the clouds from earlier nearly gone. 

When she was a little girl, she’d dreamed that the moon was a beautiful girl, and that if she spent enough nights watching it, they could be friends. In her imagination, the moon had been gentle and funny, and they’d run through her parents’ estate together all through the night.

She sniffles to clear her runny nose, and keeps walking, sand crunching under her bare feet. She'd gotten dressed for bed, but hadn't been able to sleep, so she'd wandered back out onto the beach. Maybe moving will quiet her mind down enough for her to rest. 

There's light on the beach from a few dunes over, a dim, flickering orange. She walks towards it, quietly, in case it's some of the teenagers from the disastrous party. Instead, it's Zuko and Mai, sitting by another campfire, talking so quietly she can't hear what they're saying. 

Maybe she should be upset at Zuko. But, well ... his impression of her had been mean, but it hadn't _hurt,_ not really. The most she can summon up against him is a vague annoyance. 

It's Azula's laughter afterward that stings.

But that's just Azula, that's just how she is. There's a price to be paid for being by her side; you might as well ask fire not to burn you.

She draws up just behind the closest dune, making sure she's hidden outside the circle of light. 

She should step into the firelight and say hello. But that will make the moment be over, and she doesn't want it to be over. It feels like a watercolour painting, something too soft to be happening for real.

Mai says something quietly into Zuko’s ear, and tugs at the line of his jaw until she pulls him in for a kiss, and oh she should stop watching, but she can’t. She can’t make herself look away. 

She still can't hear them, but she can see them clearly, the way that Mai inches her hand closer towards him on the sand, the serious look in Zuko's eyes. The colour their auras make together should be ugly, but instead they flow over and around each other, brighter than Mai’s, more stable than Zuko’s. 

They’re kissing deeply, much more deeply than they kiss in front of her and Azula. Ty Lee doesn’t think she’s ever kissed anyone in a way that deep, that sincere, that obviously meant. Sure, she’s kissed boys before, kissed them and had fun doing it. But they’re holding onto each other in a way that’s both hard and soft, as though they don’t really know how to hold each other, as though the only thing they know is that they very much want to. 

It’s not a performance. It’s not for anyone’s benefit. It’s terrifying. 

She wants to reach out, shake them both by the shoulders, tell them that this is dangerous. That you can’t want this much, not obviously, that there’s a risk in it sweeping up behind them like a huge dark wave. 

Mai breaks the kiss. “My leg’s numb,” she says dryly, and shuffles her leg out from under her, sliding on the wet sand.

There’s a hollow ache somewhere under her ribs, like the time she fell off the balance beam and knocked the wind out of herself so hard that she almost threw up. 

It’s not like she’d want to kiss Zuko. Even if he wasn’t dating Mai, who’s basically her best friend, she would feel weird kissing him. So why does she feel so bad?

The dune slides away under her feet, in a dry, quiet scrape. Zuko turns his head toward her hiding place, and oh no, Ty Lee had forgotten how vigilant he is for sudden noise. “Who’s there?” he asks. 

And in a horrible moment, Ty Lee sees herself as they would both see her, watching from outside the bright circle of the fire, watching with a dumb, hungry look on her face.

 _Circus freak_ , her memory helpfully supplies, and she can feel the sob building in her throat, raw and awful. 

She takes off running, in the opposite direction from the beach house, but she can’t stop herself now, can’t change direction. She’s running so fast that she almost wonders if she’ll leave the moon behind, if it’ll stop and leave her in darkness. 

***

She does have to stop eventually, lungs burning, and flop down on her back next to the water. The moon is still in the sky, almost directly above her. 

“Hello, moon,” she says, out loud, as if it were listening. For a moment, she wishes she were back on her parents' estate, sneaking out at night on imagined adventures. The worst that could happen there was being ignored.

The girl in the moon hadn’t laughed at her, except when she was joking. 

She keeps flipping between thoughts, her mind on an endless repeat: Azula at the party looking like-herself-but-someone-else, Azula laughing at her on the beach, Mai and Zuko kissing. As soon as she pushes one down, another comes up after it, like the whack-a-badgermole game back at the circus. 

Zuko had made fun of her for wanting to live in her own little Ty Lee world, but was she so wrong for wanting things to be nice? Was she dumb for wanting to live in a world that, for once, wasn't a game with secret rules and wrong answers?

Maybe she won't spend any of tomorrow with them. Maybe she'll go find some new boys to hang out with, or maybe some of the boys from the party would actually be normal if she talked to them one-on-one. Maybe she'll find a boyfriend and her aura will finally show up, just as pink as she's always said it is. 

She pictures them kissing on the beach, pictures the circle of onlookers. What would their aura look like, combined?

Peachy-pink if she kissed a boy with a yellow aura, pale pink if she kissed a boy with a white aura, dark pink if she ... no, had one of the boys from the party had a white aura, or is she remembering wrong?

Purple, bright and electric and real, if she ... if she ...

She sits bolt upright.

It’s not a real thought. Sure, it had been in her head, but it’s not real. 

She pushes her palms into her closed eyelids as though it will push the colours back into them, back up into her brain where they can’t make her think dumb, wrong things. 

All it does is make colour bloom behind her eyelids, bright as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(
> 
> i wanted to write this story in HUGE part because of the Beach Episode, because i fell in love with this very wounded group of friends who weren't really taught how to do relationships right and who keep hurting each other because they have conflicting emotional needs
> 
> and also because that one scene in the beachhouse where Ty Lee fake-flirts with Azula is just _painfully_ much the baby gay experience, ouch.


	3. Grey

She's started having the dreams again. 

***

“Rematch?” Azula asks, with a funny smile on her face.

“Of course,” Mai says.

The training grounds are hot today, hot enough that Ty Lee is sweating even on the sidelines. Ever since the eclipse, it's been almost too hot to breathe, but today is especially bad. She doesn't know how Mai and Azula are still fighting in this weather.

She leans back in the shade, trying to enjoy the fight.

Their movements are technically perfect; even the Academy Masters would have found no fault. But Ty Lee has seen them fight so many times that she knows what they look like when they’re in top form, lovely and deadly as lightning. And they're not in top form now.

"Come on, you're fighting like ..." Azula stops mid-sentence, blinks, continues. "A child."

Ty Lee knows what she meant to say. _You're fighting like Zuko_ had been a common Azula taunt, especially against Mai.

But they don't talk about Zuko anymore.

Even Azula hasn't mentioned him, not since she came out of her audience with the Firelord the day after the eclipse looking chalk-white. It's like they've all agreed he doesn't exist.

"Go, Azula," she yells. "Go Mai!"

That's her job, make things light when they're not, steer the conversation away from awkward topics. Now that Azula and Mai are barely talking, it's been more important than ever.

It only takes a few more blows before Mai's down in the dirt again, not looking particularly bothered about it. 

“Mai,” Azula chides, “It feels like your heart’s not in it today.”

“My heart’s never in anything,” Mai says.

Ty Lee would have believed her, if she hadn’t seen her and Zuko that night on the beach, if she hadn’t seen them holding each other like they were something that would disappear otherwise. 

They don't talk about that trip to Ember Island either.

Mai stands up, dusts herself off, and turns towards Ty Lee. “You want to have a try? I don’t think I’m enough of a challenge for Azula, right now.”

“No,” Azula says, and her voice and her aura crackles around the word. “I’m not finished with you, yet.”

She hits out again, not even bothering to call the fight on. 

Mai doesn’t look startled, Mai’s aura doesn’t change. Not even when Azula hits her with a hard punch she can’t block, looking far too serious for Ty Lee’s tastes. 

"Come on," Azula says, with real venom in her voice. When she spins away from one of Mai's blows, Ty Lee can see lightning sparkling at her fingertips.

“Stop,” she yells, and both girls whip around to look at her, feet planted awkwardly. “I’m getting so hot out here,” she continues, wiping her brow theatrically. “And I’m getting eaten alive. Can’t we go inside for now?”

Azula sighs. “Really?”

Maybe she’d just been imagining things. Since … since the eclipse, everyone has been on edge. It feels when Mai balances a ripe piece of fruit on a knifeblade for practice, controlling her movement just enough that it doesn’t slice through.

Maybe the tension’s just getting to her head. 

Mai stretches again, and yawns. “She’s right. It’s too hot out here to fight.”

They pack up silently. Of course, they don't talk about what just happened, the way the fight had gone sour.

They don't talk about Zuko. They don't talk about the way the palace feels like being underwater, tension settling in the air like its own aura. They don't talk about how Mai's almost silent, about how Azula seems sharper, stretched.

Sometimes, Ty Lee wonders if you can explode from having too many things in you that you don't talk about, too many unsaid secrets.

***

It's the third time this week Azula has done something nice for her "for no particular reason," and Ty Lee is starting to get anxious.

"Ahhh," Azula says, lying back in the water. "It's nice to relax."

Once is fine. Once makes sense. Azula can be kind, when she's not too distracted, and it's not like she doesn't care about her friends.

Twice? Not as common, but not impossible, either. 

Three times? Well, lightning can strike twice. But Ty Lee knows what the laws of chance are like.

"I've always said that the Royal Spa is the best in the world."

This is what normal friends do, do favours for each other and make small talk and laugh about things that don't really matter.

"Is something wrong?" Azula asks. "You don't seem happy."

Ty Lee laughs, sliding down into the water. "I'm fine," she says, her own voice echoing in her ears under the water, looking up at the starry patterns in the tiles on the roof. "Just thinking."

This is what normal friends do, right? Try not to think about how beautiful and close their friends are, and how it might feel to run their fingers through her wet hair?

They float there in silence for a few long moments, Ty Lee trying to let the tension out of her muscles. When Azula sits up, she sits up too, clearing the water from her ears.

"It's nice to get to spend girl time, just the two of us," Azula says 

Ah. She understands the rules now. It's about shutting Mai out, about making a two-of-them and a one-of-her.

It's a relief. It hurts.

Azula turns to look at her, smiling again, and how can a smile make her feel so empty? "I don't know if I've said this before, but you have such pretty eyes. They're almost silver."

What is that supposed to mean? What is it supposed to signify? What part is it supposed to play in Azula's glorious long game

"Aw, you're too nice!" she says, the words feeling like ash in her mouth.

She wants Azula to mean it, wants her to mean that and nothing but that. She wants Azula to want to be with her just for her own sake, she wants ...

But that's not how things work. Not with Azula. 

It’s like walking a tightrope, it’s like balancing on a beam. It’s her high-wire act, with the net on fire and no safety below. 

Her stomach hurts. Her fingers are starting to wrinkle in the water. She wants to go home.

***

Technically, she isn't doing anything wrong. 

Ty Lee holds on to that "technically" as she knocks on Mai’s door.

The knock is so quiet she can barely hear it herself, but it still feels too loud. 

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with going to see Mai. Azula’s never said that she isn’t allowed to hang out with her on her own, not even now that she’s angry with Mai. It's totally aboveboard and permitted. Technically.

She knocks again, just a little louder. 

“Who is it?”

“It’s Ty Lee.”

There’s a long pause, and Ty Lee isn’t sure what she should do next. Azula had mentioned in passing that Mai had said she was immature. Ty Lee isn’t sure whether she really meant it, or whether Azula’s saying things that aren’t, strictly speaking, true. This has happened before.

“Come in.”

When she does, Mai is sitting perfectly still on the bed. She looks like one of the posable dolls Ty Lee and her sisters had played with, as though she’d been left in that position by someone else. 

“Hey, Mai! I was thinking of going shopping this afternoon. Do you want to come with?”

Mai blinks, like she’s talking in some kind of foreign language. Maybe Azula had been telling the truth about her after all.

“Or we could go visit the library, or go train?”

Mai still says nothing.

After Zuko had been banished, Mai hadn’t spoken for a week. Even the instructors couldn’t make her say anything, and she’d sat out her punishments in the same numb silence she did her meals. So Ty Lee had done the only thing she knew how to do. She’d stayed with her, and she’d talked. She’d talked about the gardens and the bittermoths that were starting to come drink from the flowers, about the blue sky outside, about the girls she’d caught being envious of Mai’s long, gorgeous hair over lunch.

This time is worse.

Mai looks like she’s about to say something, brows pulled together, then stops herself. 

“What is it?”

“I’m … I’m going to tell you a secret, and you can’t tell anybody else.”

“Mai?”

There’s something frighteningly focussed about Mai’s expression. This is what’s been worse; the last time Zuko had left, she’d been like a frozen sea, still and motionless.

This time, Ty Lee is afraid that she can hear the ice creaking under their feet.

Mai reaches under her pillow, pulls out a folded scroll. It’s clearly been opened before, many, many times.

“I told the Firelord, when he questioned me about it, that Zuko didn’t leave me any notice.”

Mai unrolls the scroll. It's Zuko's writing, the cramped, precise strokes he uses when he has to be neat. Ty Lee reads through the whole thing, and then reads it through again, like she hopes it's going to say something else this time.

“He’s going to help the Avatar?”

Mai nods, her mouth a grim slash across her face.

“The Avatar. And here’s another thing. I saw the throne room, under ground, the one they stayed in during the eclipse.There’s lightning burns on the floor. And not all of them point away from the throne.” 

It takes a moment for the words to click into place in Ty Lee’s head. There’s a terrible pressure in the air, something that can’t be taken back. Mai shouldn’t be telling her this.

It isn't treason. It can’t be treason. But it's something in the same shape as treason, something that will cast the same shadows. 

And Mai is already the traitor's girlfriend, already with so much shadow over her. 

"Mai," she says, her voice almost breaking. "This isn't safe."

She doesn't know where she stands with Azula. She doesn't know what to call what's between them. But Mai is easy, Mai is her best friend, and she can't lose her.

Mai's face goes blank again. "Fine. If you don't want to know, I won't make you."

"That's not ..." Ty Lee says, and then stops. She doesn't even know what Mai's talking about. All she wants is for them to be safe. All she wants to do is to stop the ice from breaking.

"He was right about you," she says, and turns away, her aura as featureless as ever. "I'll let you stay in your bubble if that's what makes you happy."

Ty Lee doesn't know what to say to that. She doesn't know what makes her happy, not these days.

***

"So let me get this straight," Azula says, one eyebrow raised. "My traitor brother broke into the Boiling Rock? Not "out of," but "into?'"

"According to my uncle," Mai says.

"Why?" Azula looks baffled. "I mean, other than the fact that he's totally clueless."

Mai shrugs. "My uncle didn't say. He just said he was there. Imprisoned."

"Maybe he thought his uncle was there?" Ty Lee is surprised to hear her own voice. She's not the one who offers points on strategy, that's not her role in the team. But that's what she would have done if someone she really cared about, like Azula or Mai, were trapped in there. 

Azula looks surprised too, but then smiles. "Ah, of course. Zuzu is so ridiculously sentimental about people.”

Ridiculous. Sentimental. Clueless. Something in her feels too tight to breathe

She's wrong again, wrong even when she's right.

***

The worst thing is that Ty Lee’s hands are fine. 

She squeezes her fingers into her palms, but all that gives her is a dull ache, relieved as soon as she lets go of the fist.

"Are you okay?" Mai asks.

When Ty Lee jerks her head up, Mai looks concerned. It occurs to her that she's been staring. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and that’s a lie, it’s the same kind of lie she’s been telling herself all along, but her mouth can’t form the right words for the truth.

Mai raises an eyebrow, and doesn't say anything. "I didn't ... I didn't expect you to do that," she says, finally, sounding like the words were dragged from her.

Ty Lee hadn't really expected to do that either. It was just ... Mai standing there against the blue sky, brave and good and totally alone, had made Ty Lee's heart ache. She'd looked like a hero out of a story, someone from one of the Fire Nation's old epics about warriors who went into the spirit realm to rescue their love. 

It had seemed impossibly unfair that she'd die for that. 

"You're my best friend," Ty Lee says. Mai looks startled at the admission. "I didn't want you to get hurt."

Whatever had happened as a consequence of that decision, whatever will happen in the weeks and years to come, she's still happy she made it, for that reason alone. 

"I just ... you've never disobeyed Azula before." There's a question in there, and Ty Lee doesn't know what the question is. She doesn't even know if she wants to know. 

There's a few more minutes of silence, before Mai says, "I wouldn't have blamed you."

"I would," Ty Lee says, looking down at her hands again. She’d made the right choice, she knows she did. If only being right meant that it was easy.

Their cell is cold, and damp, and she can't help but shiver. 

"I'm going to call for the guard. He should be able to get us a blanket."

"I'm fine," she says. Even if the guard would or could do it, she wouldn't want one. She's happy to be cold. It feels fair.

"No, you're not. There’s no point in lying, now. What are they going to do, put us in a worse jail?” Mai laughs bitterly. “This is the worse jail. My uncle’s told me enough times."

For once, Mai is being the optimist. Ty Lee knows there's always, always something more that she could lose by telling the truth. 

"Can you please just leave me alone?" Ty Lee snaps, and crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Can you please just not care?"

There's fire under her feet again, and she doesn't know where it's coming from. She can't look down or she'll fall, and then ...

"I can't do that," Mai says. Her aura is hard, almost physical, around her. "I couldn't not care about Zuko, and I can't not care about you. What's wrong?"

 _She's_ what's wrong, her emotions are all in the wrong order because Azula had almost killed Mai, had almost killed Zuko, and still her heart can't stop hurting. Why can't she stop hurting?

"I don't know!" she says, and squeezes her hands into fists again. "I don't know, I just ... I'm worried about Azula, okay? She doesn't have anyone."

Who's going to help Azula do her hair? Who's going to help her flirt with boys? Who's going to have her back? Ty Lee has been told that she's stupid before, but she's not stupid enough to think that the Firelord will ever have anyone's back.

"Oh, Ty," Mai says. She looks ... Ty Lee is decent at reading her friend's expressions, but she hasn't seen this one before.

It takes her a moment to recognize it as pity. 

"See, I knew you'd think I was stupid!" 

She's falling and there's no net to catch her, no deniability, no safety below her. She's falling, like she always knew she would.

She stomps off into the corner and buries her head in her arms, trying to stay angry enough to drown out the shame.

"Ty Lee." 

She ignores it. She can't face Mai again, and she certainly can't do it without bursting into humiliated tears, which is the last thing she needs. 

She can hear Mai's hesitant walk, shuffling towards her. There's a soft whump of fabric on ground; Mai must be sitting down. 

"Okay. Maybe it's stupid.”

“Thanks,” Ty Lee says, trying not to sound as damp as she feels.

“But I’m stupid too. Zuko dumped me by letter, and betrayed the whole Fire Nation, and I still love him. People are dumb like that.” She takes a deep breath, clearly thinking before she says what she's going to say next. “Love’s dumb like that.”

 _Oh_ , a part of Ty Lee thinks, at the same time another part thinks, _of course._

“I care about Zuko, and I’m not giving up on him. And I …” she pauses, clears her throat, goes on. “I care about you, too.”

 _I love Azula_ , she thinks. _I loved Azula_. It's the answer to so many questions, but more and more questions spill from it until she isn't sure she can hold them in her anymore.

She looks up. Mai is sitting awkwardly crosslegged on the floor of the cell in front of her, looking as determined as that moment she'd betrayed Azula for Zuko's sake. And her aura ...

It's grey, as always, but there are sparks throughout it, brief flashes of silverwhite, like chips of quartz. It's so strong it's almost physical. She doesn't know how she didn't see it before. Mai's not fog, she's a rock. 

"I know I told you I don't believe in nerd stuff like best friends, but you're my best friend too."

And that’s what it takes, that’s what starts her crying for real, awful hiccuping sobs that she can’t stop. It’s too much, Mai’s unwavering care and the hurt look on Azula’s face and learning what love means but only in the past tense.

"Oh no, that's ... that's the opposite of what I wanted. That's-" and Mai doesn't get to finish her sentence, because Ty Lee leans forward to hug her, burying her face in her friend's shoulder.

As Mai always does, she goes stiff for a moment, then relaxes into the hug. She even pats Ty Lee's back, and says, "There, there."

Mai doesn't know very much about comforting. From what Ty Lee knows of her parents, she probably hadn't had much education in it. But she cares enough to push through and try, which makes her awkward kindness worth a thousand gentle words from anyone else.

"What's going on in here?" someone yells from outside the door.

Mai draws herself up to her full sitting height. "If you'll excuse us, my friend here is crying because she's cold and afraid. I understand from my uncle that being cold and afraid is not a punishable offence here?"

There's a thick, pained silence from the other side of the door. Then, "Uh, no, Lady ... I mean, no."

The guard shuffles awkwardly away. Mai calls after him, "And get us a blanket while you're at it!"

Ty Lee can't help it. She giggles at that.

Everything is wrong. Maybe everything will be wrong forever, now. But she's not falling, she's caught.

Mai hugs her harder. "I guess we're just going to have to be dumb together."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **me, crying loudly** mai and ty lee's friendship is SO GOOD in boiling rock like ty lee literally commits treason to save mai and then runs to her like "you're not alone, i'm with you, i'm with you," and you can TELL from mai's expression that she wasn't expecting that ... she didn't even know how much she meant to ty lee ... maybe ty lee didn't even fully realize until that moment ... god ... 
> 
> **my downstairs neighbors, smacking the ceiling with a broom** it's two am in the morning dipshit!
> 
> sorry about last week! I had extenuating circumstances (the flu)


	4. Orange

There are carpenters on the roofs surrounding Coronation Plaza, measuring the burn holes for new beams. 

Ty Lee looks up at the group, shading her eyes against the sun. From her elevated position, she can see almost all the way across Capital City, hear the noise rising up from below.

She’s gotten to know the city well in the past few weeks; the streets around the little apartment she's been staying in, the paths leading to the Kyoshi Warriors’ little encampment outside of town, the wide roads that lead to the palace. It’s been fascinating to watch the plaza get rebuilt, damaged wood slowly replaced with new.

After a momentary pause, she walks on, up the hill towards the palace.

It isn't the first time she's been there since the coronation. She’s been a few times to talk to Mai, and once or twice more when Suki went to go speak with the Avatar and his friends. 

But it's the first time she's been with so much at stake.

She can do this. She can do this. She'd chi-blocked experienced earthbenders. She'd faced down the heir to the Fire Nation. She'd fought the guards at Boiling Rock for the sake of her new friends, even though it very much could have gotten her killed. 

She's practiced what she needs to say. All she needs to do is say it.

Too soon, the Gates of Sozhin fill her whole vision. She stops outside of the gates, willing herself to knock.

Nobody has been anything but kind to her the other times she's come to the palace. Mai had been clearly happy to see her, Zuko had at least been not unhappy. Even the Avatar and his friends had been kind.

Every time, at least one person had invited her to stay. And every time, the thought had made her heart feel tight and trapped.

Before she raises her hand to the metal, the gates swing inward, as silently as ever. On the other side, Toph Beifong is waiting, her hands on her hips.

"Ty Lee!" she says, grinning broadly. "Zuko said you'd be here."

"How do you always know who it is?"

Toph taps a finger to the side of her head, knowingly. "It's all in the footsteps."

She huffs in fake outrage. "That's not an answer!"

Secretly, she's glad it's Toph. To her surprise, the earthbender had been the first of the Avatar's friends to talk to her like a friend.

She certainly hadn't done much to make a good first impression on her

"Fine, you've got me. You walk like Appa," Toph says, stomping her way along the path in imitation of the Avatar's sky bison.

"I do not!" 

Toph only grins bigger, and stomps harder. "I could hear you coming from aaaaaaaall the way across the city. That's how I knew to be here."

She keeps up the impression until Ty Lee has to laugh, and then subsides, looking smug.

It's hard to focus on feeling afraid or small with Toph around.

"Why are you out here on guard duty?" she asks, when she has enough breath to be asking things.

Toph shrugs. "I guess they ran out of shirtless statues of Ozai for me to wreck?"

Ty Lee looks around the palace grounds. She always expects the poisonous red aura to be here, pooling in corners and shadows. It's a fresh surprise every time when it isn't.

"I've been making some statues of me from the metal, and they're way cooler," Toph continues. "Sokka says I should save the metal for "something useful," but what does he know about art?"

Ty Lee snorts. Sokka had been visibly nervous around her the first few times they'd met again, obviously expecting her to flirt as aggressively as she had before. It hadn't helped that the first time she'd seen him again, she'd started laughing, laughing so hard she almost threw up.

Of course, Sokka's aura is blue, too.

"Well, I should probably leave you here," Toph says, gesturing to the palace doors in front of them.

Ty Lee blinks. She hadn't realized that they'd made it so far.

"Tell your Warrior friends I'll kick their asses again the next time we fight!"

Ty Lee sticks out her tongue. "I won't, and you won't either. Yu Yuan's getting better at chi-blocking!"

She watches Toph walk back down the path, grinning despite herself. Toph's funny, fierce, and fearless, mean in a way that isn't really mean, not deep down.

She doesn't understand why she'd hated her so much before.

***

The Throne Room isn't what she'd expected.

She'd heard from ... she'd heard that the Throne Room was a symbol of the Fire Nation's might, decorated in the finest red silk, with fire blooming all around the walls to light the audience chamber. And the throne was gold, so finely-engraved that it seemed like something that had come from the spirit world.

Now, the room looks gutted, huge chunks of the back wall punched out, dark scorch marks on the bare stone. There's no gold except the sunlight spilling in through the holes, no fire but the brazier in the middle of the room, no throne except for two wooden chairs around it.

Zuko is sitting in one of them, sitting like he doesn't know what to do with his hands. 

"Zuko!" she yells, and skips to close the gap between them. Halfway there, she stops. "Oh, should I be bowing, or something?"

He looks mortified. "Uh, no."

It's been a little easier talking to him, since ... well, since everything that had happened. He's still awkward, but it's like some of his rough edges have been sanded smooth. 

His aura's different too, the same kind of different it's been since she saw him at the Boiling Rock. It’s orange, balanced between red and yellow. And it flows around him, like fire, like water.

"Sorry the room is a mess."

Ty Lee looks around. "Yeah, jeez, what happened in here? Tornado? Avatar state?"

Zuko frowns. "The room was destroyed when we got here. Broken mirrors, burned tapestries. I thought it was probably better to start again."

She certainly can't fault him for not getting it patched up. From all accounts, the new Firelord has been working around the clock, scheduling audiences in between holding trials, issuing pardons, attending diplomatic meetings, and figuring out reparations. 

Despite herself, she's impressed.

"Besides, the old throne room was awful. No natural light. Anyways, what did you want to talk about?"

She's startled; she'd been expecting more small talk beforehand. Then again, it is _Zuko_ she's talking to.

"You know the Kyoshi Warriors are leaving the Fire Nation soon?"

"Yes. I need to talk to Suki before she leaves, about supplies for refugees"

Ty Lee squeezes her hands into fists. "I want to ... I'm going to leave with them."

Maybe it's selfish. There are plenty of people who would happily see the old Firelord back on the throne, people who didn't care what he'd shown himself to be. Zuko will need all the allies that he can gather. 

But she can't be one of them. Not right now. 

Zuko nods. "Okay."

She barrels on, determined to get at least a few of her arguments out before he stops her. "I think that me joining the Kyoshi Warriors is an important symbol of cultural exchange between our nations. I mean, I've already started teaching them chi-blocking, and they've taught me some of their fan moves!"

"Okay."

"Also, I think it's important that the nobility is seen helping out with the relief effort, since I know not everyone's happy about it. Well, I'm not sure if I'm actually a noble anymore, I haven't talked to my parents in ages, haha, but it's the spirit that matters, right?"

"Okay?"

"Plus, I think that since I helped take Ba Sing Se in the first place, it's really my duty to help with relief efforts. Honestly, I'm going to be more helpful in the Earth Kingdom than ... oh."

She finally registers that Zuko hadn't been arguing with her.

"Wait, 'okay?'"

"Mai thought you might want to," Zuko says.

Ty Lee opens her mouth, and then doesn't have any words to fill it, except the wrong ones.

That Capital City is filled with ghosts. That being with the Warriors makes her happy in a way she's never been, not even when she was touring with the circus. That she'd seen Yu Yuan and Ai kissing the day they'd been freed from prison, looking like they didn't care if the whole world saw them, and she'd watched them for so long that she's pretty sure the image is burned onto the back of her eyelids forever.

That for once in her life, she knows exactly what she wants.

There's a moment of awkward silence, before Zuko turns back towards her and asks, "Is that all? I just thought ... I thought you'd ask for something else."

A month ago, she would have asked to see Azula. She would have wanted to see her, to see if her aura had shattered like brittle things often do. To say she was sorry, to ask for an apology, to shout, to break down crying, to say that she had loved her and that maybe in a kinder world ...

But it won't give her the peace she wants it to. 

So instead, she just says, "No, nothing else."

Zuko looks relieved. "Just ... tell Mai before you leave. In person." He has the grace to look embarrassed at that. "She cares about you, and she's going to miss you."

It hits her that maybe, in his awkward Zuko way, he's trying to say that Mai isn't the only person who will miss her.

His aura makes his face look warm, in a way it hadn't before. 

It's a good colour, she decides. It suits him. 

"I'm going to go tell her now, actually."

At the thought of it, her heart feels too big for her chest, too full. There's so much she's going to miss, Mai and her old friends from the circus, and the Avatar and his friends, and even Zuko, and the lights of Capital City at night, and the Firework Festivals and ... and ...

Maybe she’ll be able to see Azula again, maybe they’ll meet on some far bright day where their slate is wiped clean and all hurts and betrayals are forgiven. But they’ll have to meet in a different way. She has to be someone else, not Azula’s accommodating shadow. 

And for that, she has to leave. 

So she only cries a little as she walks away from the Throne Room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *peace signs* healing & slow growth & figuring out who you are and what you actually want is where it's At!!
> 
> (I am so sorry about how late this is, I have no excuses except who I am as a person.)


	5. Green

It's on Toph's second visit to the Warriors that the topic comes up.

"Suki said that you see people's auras,” Toph says, wringing the water from her hair with both hands.

They had gone for a swim in the lake around Kyoshi Island after a hot afternoon, making sure to stay shallow enough that Toph could touch the bottom. 

“Yeah,” Ty Lee says, distracted. Toph’s hair is longer than she expected, all loose and wet.

“She says they’re colours that tell you things about people? How does that work?”

Ty Lee shakes herself, goes back to patting her clothes dry with a towel. It’s not like she’s been avoiding the topic. She just … hadn’t mentioned it, and maybe she’d steered the conversation away from it every time it had come up.

Okay, maybe she had been avoiding it.

“Okay, so basically, the colour that people’s aura is tells me stuff about them! So, for example, Suki’s is brown, because she’s steady and reassuring, and –“

“I hate to put a damper on things,” Toph says, with a shrug, “but that doesn’t mean anything to me. Blind since birth, remember?”

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry!”

“Eh, it’s fine,” Toph says, but her aura looks wobbly at the edges.

Sad, Ty Lee thinks, from her knowledge of her friend and her aura. So she tries to think of the right words, wringing her hair out in silence as she does.

“Listen,” she says, finally, “you know how we’re drying in the sun right now, and it’s really warm after the lake, and it feels nice?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I can’t describe auras as colours, but I can describe how they make me feel, looking at them. If Aang’s aura were a feeling, that’s how it would feel.”

She likes Aang, and not just for his bright yellow aura. She likes him because he's funny, because he's nice. Because he talks about things that are impossible but real, like dances held in Capital City before the war, like how the Air Nomads didn't care who you loved.

Toph snorts. “Yeah, that sounds like Twinkletoes.” The sad wobbly feeling has gone out of her aura. “What about Katara?”

She has to think more about the waterbender. Even now, she and Katara aren’t especially close. Toph says it takes a long time for her to stop being mad about things, and that chi-blocking her had been pretty big, as things go.

“You ever pushed down on a pulse point and feel the blood flowing underneath? It’s flowing, and strong?”

Toph puts a thumb to the pulse point on her throat, tipping her head up to do it. Ty Lee has to look away, embarrassed.

“Makes sense,” Toph says, and grins. “Oh, oh, do Zuko next!”

This one’s easy. “For a while, he had such a stressful aura, it was like when you fall asleep on your arm and you wake up with it filled with pins!”

Toph laughs, and Ty Lee feels warm. There have been a lot of things that have made her feel warm in the last few months—letters from Mai, praise from Suki, getting casually called a friend by the other Warriors—but Toph’s laughter always makes her feel the warmest.

“What about me?” Toph asks, after she’s finally able to stop laughing. “Do I have the baddest, meanest, toughest aura out there?”

When Ty Lee doesn’t respond right away, she frowns. “Hey, don’t tell me I’ve got a crummy aura!”

Toph very much does not have a crummy aura. That’s the problem.

“It’s really pretty, actually!” she says, and brings the towel up to dry her face out of sheer embarrassment. “Pretty” feels like a weird thing to call a friend’s aura.

But Toph doesn’t act like it’s a weird think. Instead, she asks, “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s …” 

She struggles to find words that aren’t seeing words. Toph’s aura really is beautiful, twisting dark around her like volcano glass, like roots in the darkness underground. But none of that is going to be helpful.

“It’s cool,” she says, finally, “and strong. Like you’re stepping into a river, and feeling it rush around your ankles.”

“Huh,” Toph says. “Cool and strong.”

“And it feels … okay, it’s still and moving at the same time, like you can feel the river sliding around you, but you’ve got your feet planted straight in the mud.”

She avoids saying the other thing she thinks, which is that it looks like it might feel to run her fingers through Toph’s hair.

Toph puts on an outraged face. “I’m like mud?” she says, and shakes the cold water out of her hair so that Ty Lee shrieks. “You’re the worst!”

But Ty Lee knows that Toph doesn’t mean it, not seriously.

That’s the other thing she likes about Toph’s aura. It’s clear almost all the way through, so clear that she can see through it to what’s behind.

There’s nothing hidden in it to hurt her.

***

They can’t write letters, of course. But they see each other often enough that it doesn't matter, crossing paths at Kyoshi Island, Republic City, Ba Sing Se, Earth Kingdom villages so small that Ty Lee doesn't remember their names.

If she were a more hopeful person, if hoping didn't feel like an impossible risk, she'd think that Toph was doing it deliberately.

Still, she loves listening to the way Toph tells her stories when they meet, stories about her travels with the Avatar and about her time as a prizefighting earthbender, her visits to the Fire Nation and her time in Ba Sing Se. She dances just on the edge of Ty Lee thinking she's lying, irreverent grin flashing bright across her face.

But there are bits of her life that don’t make it into her dazzling stories.

Toph comes to Kyoshi Island from a visit with her parents, aura almost opaque. 

Her parents, Toph says, worry about her. Worry about their delicate little flower of a daughter, who can punch through sheet metal and fight men twice her size. Apparently, they seem to think that once she’s gotten all the earthbending out of her system, she’ll come back to live with them and be their soft, fragile child again.

“It’s not that they can’t see who I really am,” she says, with a bitter twist to her mouth. “It’s that they won’t.”

Hearing Toph talk about her parents’ overcarefulness feels like looking in a mirror, her own reflection but backwards.

“Your parents sound dumb,” Ty Lee says. “And they’re extra-dumb if they don’t want to know the real you, because the real you is pretty cool.”

Ty Lee has been learning more about friendship from Suki, from the Warriors, from uncensored contact with Mai. She knows that “friends” means wanting to help, wanting to patch up the hurt bits of other people as much as you can.

But there’s something about the way her stomach goes at Toph’s watery smile that can’t quite be explained with “friends.”

***

"Toph," she asks one night in Capital City, looking out at the lights. “I’ve got a question for you.”

She asks it like it’s casual, like she hasn’t spent hours wondering which words to use.

Toph shrugs. “Shoot."

She's dressed almost like an Earth Kingdom noblewoman for the party they'd been at, if you ignore her bare feet and face. She certainly hadn't been acting like one; she and Aang had done goofy dance moves until Firelord Zuko had actually laughed. 

She looks away, down at her hands, to make the question come easier.

“That day, when we were … in the Earth King’s palace. Before … well, before.”

"Yeah?" There's something a little more serious in her voice, but Ty Lee doesn't want to look over at her face.

“What you said there. About me. How did you know that?”

She wants to ask: how did you know I was lying to myself? She wants to ask: how did you know I'd built myself a prison so perfect I didn't even think there was an outside.

She wants to ask: how did you know that I liked girls?

“You mean, was it an earthbender thing?” Toph laughs. “No.”

It feels very quiet, and Ty Lee is almost tempted to break the silence with a joke.

“I knew because I did the same, at first. Pretended."

Toph’s voice is easy, but her aura twists around her like fingers through each other. 

Ty Lee knows about the way things are in the Earth Kingdom. Ba Sing Se is changing, but nothing there changes quickly. You still don’t kiss other girls or other boys there, not in public.

"Actually, I kind of did the opposite. I liked Katara for a while, but I didn't want to say it to myself, so I got mad at her a lot instead."

Ty Lee thinks about the way she'd thought about Azula, the way she'd tried to package the feelings into a box they didn't fit.

"Oh," she says quietly, trying not to choke on the things in her throat. "Yeah."

Toph grins, big and pretty. "Anyways, girls are good, and I'm glad I like them."

There's a bravado in her voice that doesn't quite reach her aura, a bravado that makes Ty Lee’s heart feel too big and too full.

Toph isn't fearless, after all. She’s brave, which is a thousand times better.

"Me too," she says, barely a whisper but loud all the same.

***

Toph tells her about vibrations, how the earth moves under people when they walk. How if you love the earth enough, you can feel the differences in its motion, can feel in a way that's not too different from seeing.

"Better, actually," Toph says one day while they're out walking together, grinning widely. "I can feel your heartbeat right now."

If she can, Ty Lee thinks, then maybe she'll be able to realize why it's mortifyingly fast.

Toph is funny. Toph doesn't care about proper. Toph gets into fights with men bigger than her and comes out with a grin on her face, Toph had made her a delicate little barrette from scrap metal and blushed when she complimented it, Toph punches her in the shoulder but doesn't ask her for anything that hurts to give.

Toph is Toph. And Ty Lee is Ty Lee, and that seems to be enough for Toph to want to be around her.

But Ty Lee knows about prices. She knows there's always some way you have to pay.

***

The first time Toph’s aura goes weird around her, she thinks it’s just her imagination.

The second time, she notices something for certain, something dull and heavy.

The third time, she hears it in Toph’s voice too. She wants to ask why, but she doesn’t have the words.

There isn’t a fourth time. Whatever accidental magnetism had been pulling them together reverses.

***

It takes months for them to be in the same place at the same time. The Kyoshi Warriors are called to Ba Sing Se to help with the aftermath of a fight between earthbenders.

She doesn’t see Toph in the cleanup effort, but she hears whispers: the greatest earthbender in the world is in the city, and she’ll knock anyone’s heads together if they start any more fights.

So she follows where the rumours go, until they lead her to a tea-shop in the Upper Ring, green and quiet. Toph isn’t in right now, the Avatar’s friends tell her, but they also tell her where she is.

She finds Toph out in the empty plains, a good distance from the city’s walls. Toph is building columns of dirt and then collapsing them again, loud enough to make the earth shake.

She doesn't bother to call Toph's name. She knows that Toph knows her footsteps, and that she'll turn around when she wants to.

Sure enough, Toph turns around to face her eventually, after all the dirt has settled back to its position on the ground.

“Oh, hi.” Toph says, and gives her a dispirited little wave. Her aura looks almost like mud for real, pale and dull and opaque.

Ty Lee’s heart hurts just looking at it.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” Ty Lee says.

“Yeah,” Toph says. “I’ve been busy.” She kicks some dirt around with her left foot, tracing patterns in the dirt.

Ty Lee swallows. She’d been raised to be polite. She’s good at being polite. “I think you’re avoiding me,” she says.

“I’m not,” Toph says, and it doesn’t take looking at her aura to know she’s lying. “Just … leave me alone, okay?”

“I’ll leave you alone,” Ty Lee says, but makes herself continue, “but I want to know what’s wrong, first.”

Toph looks up sharply. “What’s wrong with me? Nothing’s wrong with me! I’m just tired of stupid walls, and stupid rules, and stupid people! I’m tired of people telling me what a great earthbender I am but then still treating me like a stupid kid.”

“But you are a great earthbender!” Ty Lee says.

Toph puts her hands up to her face, lets out something that could be a laugh or a sob. “Great, thanks! And I’m sure if I said I was the moon, you’d agree with me then, too! Or if I said that Ba Sing Se is made of solid gold!”

“What?” 

“That’s the problem, okay? I thought we were friends, but it feels … you agree with everything I say, and I hate it!”

“I don’t agree with everything you say!”

Toph snorts. “Last time we talked, I said we should start riding platypus bears into battle, and you agreed!”

“Oh,” Ty Lee says, and then “You weren’t serious about that?”

“No! And even if I was, I don’t want you to agree just because I’m saying it.” She looks angry on the face of things, but as Ty Lee knows well, anger isn't always anger, not underneath.

“At least from my parents, and from stupid people, I expect it. But it’s so much worse with you, because I … whatever.”

Oh. 

It's not that she wants to baby Toph, it really isn't. It's that she doesn't know how to be with people and not agree with them. It's that she doesn't know how to keep people around and be honest, all at the same time.

But of course, Toph wouldn't know the difference.

"And even if you say you'll stop doing it, you're only saying that because you think I want you to. I can't be friends with a parrotmonkey!"

Toph stomps away, away from her, away from the city. 

She could leave, too. She could run away, she could avoid this talk, avoid putting her heart so much on the outside of her.

But she can't.

"I think you're wrong," she says, and her voice creaks, like opening an untouched door.

Toph turns around.

She hasn't rehearsed. She hasn't thought about what she's going to say, and she doesn't know whether it's going to come out right.

She only knows what she means.

"I'm not a parrotmonkey," she says, making herself walk forward, close the distance between them. "I'm a person, and I have my own opinions and ... and ... stuff!"

She hopes Toph will trust that she's telling the truth, because her heart is hammering so fast that she won't be able to tell.

"Fine, then," Toph says, with her face frozen in an expression Ty Lee doesn't recognize. "What are your opinions?"

"I think that riding platypus bears is a stupid idea."

Toph rolls her eyes. "Yeah, duh."

"I think you're being unfair to me right now. I think that sometimes you're a jerk when your feelings are hurt. I think you should've told me if I was upsetting you!"

Ty Lee deliberately doesn't look at Toph's aura. She cares what her friend is feeling, of course. But she has to say what she has to say.

"I think that you're really funny, and really brave. I think you're nicer than you act like you are. I like your hair, and I think that you have a really pretty smile."

She's flying through the air, going so fast that everything feels like a blur. She doesn't have a net under her because this isn't a performance, this isn't a show.

This isn't allowed, and she's doing it anyway.

"And I miss you. I miss you a lot."

Toph doesn't say anything, but there's something big and hopeful in her face, something that gives Ty Lee hope in return.

"I don't have a lot of practice disagreeing with people," she says, and then grins. "Did I do it right?"

For a moment, Toph stays frozen, and then she melts into laughter, loud and hearty as rocks falling down a mountain. 

Ty Lee knows that there is laughter-where-you-are-left-on-the-outside and laughter-where-you-are-on-the-inside. She also knows this is the second one. 

She knows it's okay to laugh, too. 

"You're ridiculous, you know that?" Toph asks, after she wipes her streaming eyes. The words hit exactly like Toph's punches, not enough force behind them to hurt. 

"I did grow up in the circus," Ty Lee says, which sets Toph off again.

Finally, there's an uninterrupted silence between them, just the wind across the plains. It's dizzyingly open out here, the sky so big that it doesn't seem real. 

"Maybe I missed you too," Toph says, barely any louder than a heartbeat. 

They're standing so close, too close maybe, but it feels right.

"Okay, fine," Toph says, and goes pink in a way that makes Ty Lee's heart stutter. "More than maybe. Ba Sing Se's no fun without you." 

"I guess we'll have to ... go explore it together?"

It sounds less assured than she wants it to, less assured than she means it to. And she doesn't care, because Toph smiles.

"Yeah."

Ty Lee knows what she should do next, and what she wants to do, and for once, they're the same thing.

She reaches out to take Toph's hand, slow enough that Toph could pull away if she wanted. Instead, Toph laces her fingers through hers, tightening the grip.

She's studied people's auras over the years, searching for ways to blend in, to get less hurt. But holding Toph's hand under the open sky, she can see more colours than she's ever seen before, more colours than she knew were possible.

***

It happens a week after that conversation, a month before she and Toph kiss. It's so subtle she almost doesn't notice it at first, and then she thinks it's the forest fog playing tricks on her eyes. 

But when she looks down at her hands, it's too clear for it to be anything else: the green aura that wraps around her fingers, bright and gentle as new spring buds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (so sorry about the time between updates, a Whole Bunch happened in my life in the in-between)
> 
> It was so important to me to show that Ty Lee not only realized she was a lesbian, but that she found out how to be herself wholly and sincerely, without remaking herself as what people wanted her to be!! Like, cutting that kind of exhausting and unhealthy shit out of your life is HARD, and it's not linear, but it makes life so much brighter and more colourful (pun extremely intended).
> 
> Thank you so much for all your kind words and PLEASE check out [@thisismeconfessing's incredible art of it!](https://gayrightszuko.tumblr.com/post/182788579468/bittermoth-wings-click-for-quality-inspired)


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